design those costumes
for Goldsmith and Block. Never, in all probability, have got even that
job in the chorus of _The Girl Up-stairs_. All she'd accomplished in
that bitter year since she left Rodney had been to make another man fall
in love with her!

But she didn't let herself go like that for long. The situation was too
serious for the indulgence of an emotional sprawl. Here she was in an
apartment that cost her thirty-seven dollars a month. She'd got to earn
a minimum of thirty dollars a week to keep on with it. Of course she
couldn't go on working for Galbraith. The question was, what could she
do? Well, she could do a good many things. Whatever Galbraith's motives
had been in giving her her chance, she had taken that chance and made
the most of it. Gertrude Morse knew what she could do. For that matter,
so did Abe Shuman himself. The thing to do now was to go to bed and get
a night's sleep and confront the situation with a clear mind in the
morning.

It was a pretty good indication of the way she had grown during the last
year that she was able to conquer the shuddering revulsion that had at
first swept over her, get herself in hand again, eat a sandwich and
drink a glass of milk, re-read a half dozen chapters of Albert Edwards'
_A Man's World_, and then put out her light and sleep till morning.

It was barely nine o'clock when Galbraith called her up on the
telephone. She hadn't had her breakfast yet and had not even begun to
think out what the day's program must be.

He apologized for calling her so early. "I wanted to be sure of catching
you," he said, "before you did anything. You haven't yet, have you? Not
written to Shuman throwing up your job, or anything like that?"

Even over the telephone his manner was eloquent with relief when she
told him she had not. "I want to talk with you," he said. "It's got to
be somewhere where we won't be interrupted." He added, "I shan't say
again what I said last night. You'll find me perfectly reasonable."

Somehow his voice carried entire conviction. The man she visualized at
the other telephone was neither the distracted pleader she had left last
night, nor the martinet she had been working for during the last month
here in New York, but the John Galbraith she had known in Chicago.

"All right," she said, "I don't know any better place than here in my
apartment, if that's convenient for you."

"Yes," he said, "that's all right. When may I come? The sooner the
be